#amigabasic
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I have a feeling that the eagerly awaited MS Basic has left everyone a little
'cold'. I know it has me. It's a powerful basic alright but MS's effective
limiting of this wonderful 32 or 16 color graphics machine to a default 4
color med-res mode with no easy way to change it has lessen my enthusiasm
greatly. It's NOT a fun computer anymore! Maybe MS has been working too long
with 4 color IBMs or 0 color Macs. Or maybe CBM didn't want a 'fun' machine,
but a 'business' type instead. In any event, the hacking and discovering
thrill is waning. You see any MS basic uploads to DL's yet? Me neither.
Take for example the supplied 'demos/demo' program. Unexciting to say the
least in 4 color mode. So, I tried to change it to 32 color lo-res mode. I
added a 'screen 1,320,200,5,1' statement right after the 'defint' statement.
I removed the 'window 1' and the 'gosub initanimation' statements and halved
the x-coordinates in the other window statements. Without adding any 'color'
or 'palette' statements, I should have gotten a lo-res, 3 window demo with
the original default colors. Right ???? Wrong !! It would continue to run in
med-res (640,200) mode. Why ?? Hope someone can figure this one out and find
an 'easy' solution. Or take the 'demos/screen' program. Change the screen
statement to 'screen 1,640,200,4,2' and change the '270' in the window
statement to '540'. Change the 'color' statement to 'color1 mod 15,color2 mod
15' Now you should have a window 540 dots wide, right?, with nice designs
drawn in the center of the window in med-res, right? Do you ???? Damn! Way to
go MS, way to go CBM. P.S. Will there be an enhanced and bug-free ABasiC
available soon? Ed